Scheherazade Arabic Font Preview
What this font feels like
Literary, classic, strong Arabic-script identity. Good for "serious" text.
Scheherazade is a beautiful Arabic font designed for extended text and formal documents. Its graceful letterforms evoke the rich tradition of Arabic manuscript writing.
Perfect for creating elegant calligraphy designs and traditional Arabic aesthetics in your projects.
For best results, paste Arabic text for names or tattoos. Typing English will NOT translate it.
Popular Arabic Phrases
Best For
- •Long text readability
- •Traditional wall art drafts
- •Names that need clarity (multi-syllable / longer)
Watch-outs
- •Modern / minimal logos
- •Casual or playful designs
Recommended Styles to Pair With
Suggested default: Naskh • Size 96–120px • Spacing 4–10
License Note
Licensing varies by font. Check this font's specific license before commercial use. Many versions are available under open-source licenses like OFL, but always verify.
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About Scheherazade
Built for languages beyond Arabic
Scheherazade comes out of SIL International, an organisation whose work centres on lesser-served writing systems, and its design priorities reflect that. Where most Arabic typefaces target the Arabic language specifically, Scheherazade was built to cover the extended Arabic script as used for Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, Sindhi, and a long list of African and Asian languages that adapted the script with additional characters.
For most users this is invisible. For anyone setting text in a language that Arabic-first fonts render with missing glyphs or fallback substitutions, it is the difference between a working document and a broken one.
A more open, more forgiving Naskh
Compared with Amiri, Scheherazade is slightly wider, slightly more open in its counters, and slightly less formal in register. Those differences are subtle side by side and significant in use: the extra openness means it holds legibility further down the size scale, and the lower formality makes it a more comfortable fit for material that is not trying to sound like a book.
It is a strong default for educational material, documentation, and any long text where readers may be encountering Arabic as learners rather than as fluent readers.
Settings that work
Treat it as a text face: reading sizes, generous line height, no letter spacing. Because its forms are relatively open, Scheherazade tolerates tighter leading better than Amiri, though tight leading is still not a good idea when diacritics are present.
If you are setting vocalised text — with the full complement of vowel marks — test at your final size before committing. Scheherazade handles mark positioning well, but stacked marks at small sizes are demanding for any typeface, and this is where problems surface.
Licence and practical notes
Scheherazade is distributed under the SIL Open Font License. You may use it commercially, in logos, and in products you sell, at no cost and with no attribution requirement. The restriction runs the other way: you may not sell the font file itself, and a modified version must be renamed and released under the same licence.
Because the family is designed for broad language coverage rather than for display impact, it is rarely the most striking choice for a wordmark. If the goal is a brand mark rather than readable text, Reem Kufi or Aref Ruqaa will serve better.
Scheherazade or one of the alternatives?
The decision against Amiri comes down to formality and language coverage. If you are setting Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, or Sindhi, Scheherazade is the safer choice outright — its extended character set is the reason it exists. For Arabic alone in a formal document, Amiri has the more authoritative voice.
Against Lateef, which shares the same design house and licensing, the difference is density. Lateef is drawn compact for dense settings where a lot of text must fit; Scheherazade is more open and more comfortable when there is room. If your layout is tight and text-heavy, Lateef. If it is a normal page of reading, Scheherazade.
Vowel marks and vocalised text
Scheherazade is one of the few fonts here that was drawn with full vocalisation in mind. Arabic short vowels are written as marks above and below the letters, and most text faces treat them as an afterthought — the marks collide with ascenders, stack unevenly, or sit so close to the letter body that they blur together at anything below display size. Scheherazade positions them with real clearance, which is why it is the standard choice for teaching materials, children's books, and any text where pronunciation must be unambiguous.
This has a practical consequence for name and quotation work. If you are setting a phrase with vowel marks, check the result at final size before anything else: a mark that reads clearly in the preview panel can merge with the letter above it when engraved or embroidered. If the marks are decorative rather than necessary, consider leaving them out — an unvocalised setting is what an adult reader expects, and it removes an entire category of reproduction risk.
Scheherazade FAQ
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